2yo only wants to eat pasta. Recipes/other food suggestions needed please. URGENTLY!

[PavlovtheWitchesCat]

DS is 23 months (almost). He hardly eats anything. He does not drink much milk. He is not underweight, probably a little small for his age, but not developmentally disadvantaged, happy, etc.

But, he he simply is a pain to cook for. He eats:

bread/toast
milk - mostly warm, from a cup, and not loads
pasta - til it comes out of his ears
fruit
porridge/cereal
Fish fingers
tinned spagheti (sometimes beans but not always).
and the obvious junk food if offered (chips, chocolate, crisps etc, get this sometimes as he has older sister, but not loads).
Sometimes sausages

NO vegetables, unless i blend it with a tomato sauce for pasta.
No meat unless I can disguise it with pasta sauce

We try to give him pasta with a variety of sauces (cheese, tomato with veg mushed into it, etc) but he knows if it has fish in for example and picks the pasta out, leaves anything that is not actually pasta!

DD is fed up with pasta and it makes us all eating together difficult as we have to do him and us different meals, which them upsets him as he wants the same as us, but just wont eat it!

DH is getting worried, I am a bit, but i think deep down it is probably ok, we just have to accept that he will only eat pasta for a while and go with it.

But, any helpful suggestions of how to get him to eat more/reassure us that this is not so bad and if we just go with it he will get through it being fine with more variety. DD was a bit fussy like this, but not so bad, and not for so long.

My ds is a bit older at 3, but I've found he is far more likely to eat something if he's helped prepare it, even if it's just giving things a little mix in the saucepan. My ds regularly pushes things away and declares them 'yucky' without even trying them so I do sympathise, it's since I've actually let him into the kitchen while I'm cooking rather than just dishing up that I've seen any improvement in his eating. That, and picnic style meals go down well here. I let im pick pretty much what he wants from the fridge, and will often end up with a plate full of fruit and salad veg that he'd normally not touch with a barge pole. Particuarly good if you let him try different things to dip them in (ds likes some cheese and chive sauce for his raw veg and an eggcup full of quickly microwaved nutella for his fruit)

Ooo watch some cbeebies too. My ds loves I can Cook and Big Cook Little Cook and is actually quite keen to try what they make.

FFF (is it ok to call you that? your name is rather long ) we meet again!

I often do picnic style lunch or tea as this is often DDs fave meal, but DS just do not enjoy it. he will eat a sausage, or a cracker. End of.

He enjoys playing with his food, and this evening for example I have been at the end of my tether watching him 'paint' with his spoon and some custard. Not interested in eating it! Seriously, he butters bread, and 'cuts' some of his food to help, but prefers to 'wash up' than help make food. Although he happily puts his fingers in jam/peanut butter etc!

He just does not seem to be particuarly hungry these days, and over the last couple of days he has lost some weight in his face and seems lighter (but could be imagining the weight bit), possibly he has grown so lost some of the fat? He is not skinny by any stretch, but has lost some of his chub.

Not stalking you, promise
I think it's easy to overestimate how much dc need to eat. I read on here many moons ago that a child won't starve themselves and that is good advice. My ds doens't eat nearly as much as I think he should, but is full of beans none the less. He doesn't seem to want or need big meals and prefers to graze during the day. It can be infuriating, but even when he gets up after a long night of sleep, he rarely eats a whole breakfast. He also gets stuck into fads, recently he'd eat scrambled eggs for every meal if he could. Try not to worry, just offer him healthy food through the day and he might susprise you.

ds is the same and would have pasta three times a day, seven days a week if he could.

my mother snorts at me when I express any kind of concern and says that children are brought up in Italy eating pasta all the time, doesn't do them any harm etc...

I make my own sauces with vegetables blended in. Cheese sauces with finely (and I mean finely) chopped ham and some peas mixed in. Will your ds eat Philly? I do some of that with really finely chopped (mashed practically) off cuts of smoked salmon (oily fish - tick :o). I use a hand blender to turn home made bolognaise in to really fine liquid.

I have given ds some lasagne but chopped it up finely to make it look like spag bol. He also likes tortellini with spinach and ricotta filling so I think he might get a bit of iron from the spinach.

I wish I could help you wrt to cooking different meals, my dd is younger so she'll eat what she's given and hasn't taken to complaining about the amount of pasta she eats (yet) though quite often I'll do her an omelette or something equally simple to avoid giving her pasta yet again.

I'm in a slightly more fortunate position is that ds will eat most meat or fish if it's breaded and fried - so he's had veal escalope, turkey escalope, home made chicken nuggets, beef escalope, home made fish gougons etc.

One word of reassurance, ds has been like this since he was about 2.5 (I think lots of it developed as a reaction to his sister being born) but now he's 4 he's very very very gradually trying other things. I nearly fell off my chair the other day when he ate a whole mange tout :o

Onwards and upwards.

No advice but I'm in the same boat. DS is 22 months and won't eat veg at all bar tomato sauce on pasta. He doesn't like meat and is allergic to eggs and fish. Fruit is hit and miss but he will drink fruit smoothies. To top it all I'm 10 wks pregnant and suffering from morning sickness so can't cook anything from scratch - even making sandwiches makes me retch :(

I figure it'll all come out in the wash eventually......

headfairy oh, good idea about escalops, he loves things in bread, will eat breaded fish so might try doing breaded other things too. If all else fails he can have pasta as well, and DD will like it at least!

Have you tried branching into noodles? Egg, wholewheat, rice, super noodles, are sort of pasta-y and he might try it? Although it has to be said, I managed to give my dd noodles instead of her usual spagetti- and now she'll only eat noodles! But at least there's more variety.

oh yes, I forgot he loves super noodles! but seeing as DH only has the 'supa' variety, he seldom gets them. But DD loves them too so maybe that will be a good idea. Does tomato sauce go with them?

DS is similar. Discovered that Gnocci goes down pretty well. It freezes well and cooks in 3 mins which is a bonus.

DH despaired of the lack of veg issue and pureed some cooked cauli and sweetcorn and froze it in portions to use as a sauce for the gnocci. Working well so far

Is gnocci salty though? DS does like his highly flavoured food I have noticed, but possibly not a great idea to have much at almost 2!

I make my own so don't add salt. It's a mild faff but not hard, just make loads in one go and freeze. DS likes to join in with making the shapes. the Locatelli recipe is good

oooh thanks for that recipe! I am going to give it a go! a lot of work if he doesn't like them, but I love it so no problem for me!

thanks!

ok, today, not eaten much at all. I made pasta with vegetable/tomato sauce for tonights tea (DD had gymnastics so pasta is nice and easy/she gets what she is given). DH fed it to DS for lunch so he did not want more for dinner.

So, he has had today:
breakfast:
porridge made with wholemilk and blackberries, reasonably good helping of this.
toast - the innards of one whole slice - not the crusts

Lunch:
pasta as above

dinner:
3 x petit filous
1/4 ikea beaker cup of milk (ikea is relevant so you know the size, not where I shop!)

No snacks as far as I know.

Not interested in anything else to eat. At all.

Not very much eh?

Hmm... most of my suggestions have been made already but I was going to say:

Soup - DS will do dipping with bread
Noodles... gradually edging into stir-fry or soup noodles
Ravioli... for a while it seemed like the only meat that dS would get in him
Gnocchi - with pesto goes down nicely - not too salty IMO
Omlette - plain to start with then a bit of cheese if the diner will permit :)
Risotto - tricked him by saying it was teeny tiny pasta (hee hee)
Breaded stuff - chicken kiev surprisingly popular!

Soup - uses it to decorate the table
Noodles... likes this
Ravioli... loved this for a while, would eat a whole tin. Now he won't touch it
Gnocchi - will give it a go
Omlette - wont eat it, or anything egg related
Risotto - ate this for a while, but then like the ravioli went off it
Breaded stuff - will give it a try

You could in fact be me Pavlov! My DD is 18 months and eats exactly the same are your son, minus the porridge. The only other thing she will eat is boiled/poached eggs so she has these a lot as I worry about her lack of protein. Have you tried these? She won't eat any cheese except Philly and cheese triangles (which I just give her to eat whole). Meat is usually refused also. Today she had pasta with the sauce from a beef stew that I made yesterday.

We tried gnocci last week and she ate it as I think she thought it was pasta! The sauces I make for her vary from tomato with hidden veg, tomato with Philly stirred through it, Philly and pesto and that's about it. I add sweetcorn (the only veg she will eat) and sometimes chopped ham. It's terrible isn't it. My DH is more worried than I am, but I am concerned.

I am going to watch this thread for some ideas as I am really stuck.

Oh, just seen above he won't go for anything egg related. So boiled eggs are out then - will keep thinking...

lamb DH does poached egg a lot, or egg with soldiers, as DD loves both, and he just goes 'uck' at them or 'bleurgh' and then wails. He also does not like philly, he likes bread and peanut butter, or honey (bad mummy emoticon) or chocolate spread (more bad mummy), refuses anything savoury.

It is really hard as he dislikes savoury so much. DD was far less fussy and in fact prefered savoury to sweet. I could quite happily give her a picnic tea of cocktail sausages, mini baby bel, ham, tomatoes/cucumber/grapes, bread, and two chocolate biscuits and she would eat half then a chocolate biscuit then the rest before eating the last biscuit - would not go straight in for the biscuit as she loves it all. DS though, he would eat the biscuit then complain there was nothing else! So we don't do that for him

we shall await further guidance arm in arm ok lamb

try 'real' ravioli not the tinned stuff - DS went off the tinned stuff but will eat the proper stuff!

Will he eat pizza? You could let him make his own, tomato sauce on the base, choose his own veg and top with cheese.

totem he loves pizza actually. But takes the topping off before eating it...will get him to help.

Hmm, the strangeness that is my DS's capricious appetite.. He's turned down most things recently for being "too sweet", "too bright" and (most confusingly) "too real"

Tonight he necked two bowlfuls of chilli con carne and rice. I don't think it even touched the sides

I might try pizza also for DD.

I forgot Pavlov that DD also eats hummus - have you tried that? It's strange that she likes strong tastes like hummus and pesto, but won't eat potato.